Fiew! Sorry it's been a bit longer than usual, I've just been buried in work. I'm actually avoiding homework right now.

This chapter was more difficult to write than the others, but I like it, if I do say so myself.

Warning: there's torture.


"Well, well, well," said Pansy Parkinson, her face partially bathed in a moonbeam that was far too delicate for her, "if it isn't Hogwarts' resident fire-breather. Just the man I was looking for."

She looked almost skeletal in the light, and Seamus felt a chill in his bones that had nothing to do with the late November air. A small hand clasped his.

"What the fuck do you want, Parkinson? It's not curfew yet," Ginny called out. The prefect's dragonhide boots clicked against the worn-down stone floor as she approached.

"No," Parkinson said too lightly, "not for another, oh—" she looked down at her silver watch "—forty-five, forty-four, forty-three…"

Seamus squeezed Ginny's hand. "Go," he hissed as Parkinson continued her counting.

"But—"

"Go."

With a last clench of her hand, Ginny turned and ran to the Fat Lady, her red hair swaying behind her. For a brief moment, warm light flooded the corridor, and then the portrait swung shut, leaving Seamus alone with Parkinson. He pulled out his wand from his back pocket, clutching the smooth oak tightly.

"—five, four, three, two… One. Oh dear. It looks like you're out passed curfew, Finnigan. And you've got your wand out – you don't really think you're going to hex the Head Girl, do you?"

"What do you want?" He echoed Ginny, his jaw hard and his shoulders squared. He felt the now-familiar flare of anger simmering under his skin and flickering in his chest, but he focussed on the feel of the wood in his hand and breathed deeply. Control, Pomfrey had said. Control.

"Well, I think those transgressions deserve a detention, don't you? Now now, Finnigan, don't make this difficult. Boys?"

He hadn't heard them come up behind him – he didn't know who they even were – when suddenly strong, calloused hands wrenched his wand from his hand and pulled his hands roughly behind his back.

"The fuck—"

He heard Pansy yell Stupefy! and all went dark.

::

Seamus had always liked fire, and fire had always liked him – a little too much, if you asked his professors. His father too had always been unnerved by the speed at which his son could spark up fires in the woods during camping excursions, and hadd never quite gotten over the time his little four-year-old Seamus had lit his newspaper on fire in his first display of childhood magic, in the midst of a tantrum about taking a bath (though maybe that had been less about the fire and more about the magic itself, which was unlike anything he'd ever witnessed or imagined, he'd told his son years later). In classes, it had been the running gag: what would Seamus burn up this time? Fred and George had taken bets on how often the boy would return to the tower with singed eyebrows and smoking holes in his robes. Dean had carefully hidden away his sketchbooks when Seamus was in a mood. Pomfrey had tutted and healed, and in his fifth year, after his father died and Seamus' emotions came out to play with the flames often, she'd even given him a tub of aloe-scented burn salve, just in case.

Fire held mystery – Seamus had spent hours sitting in front of the wood stove at home and the hearth in the common room, staring at the flickering red and orange and yellow and light that wasn't quite a colour but was more like pure energy. And fire held power, as he'd discovered only three days ago, incredible power, and danger, and warmth.

But this, this fire was not his to tame. It licked at his bones and crackled against his skin with ferocity, and it tore his flesh apart to settle in the sinews of his muscles and the follicles of his hair and the marrow of his bones and the space between his breaths. It fucking hurt, unlike anything he'd ever experienced. It was like being ripped wide open to have his insides replaced with acid that burned through his lungs and his veins, and incinerated every disc in his spine, shredded each nerve ending in his fingers and toes. There was nothing left of him, no more Seamus John Finnigan, there was only fire and heat and pain.

He couldn't remember how it started – why was he burning? How long had this been happening? Where was he? Maybe, he thought, maybe this was hell. Maybe he'd died, and he'd committed to many sins to do it peacefully. Yes. That was it. He was burning in hell. There was no other way to explain it, because if he really was truly on fire like this he would have died by now, wouldn't he? It would have stopped, wouldn't it?

Is this what it felt like to be a phoenix? Would he rise from his own flesh-and-blood ashes after all this?

His eyes could not open, or if they did, they didn't see anything but red, as he'd lost control over his body when the burning had started, whenever that was. An eternity ago, probably. Distantly, he heard someone screaming, high-pitched and inhuman. Maybe it was another poor, lost corpse, burning along with him, but too far away for him to reach out to.

Then there was laughter.

Who would laugh in a place like this, this fucking hell? Well, Satan, probably, but no stories he'd ever heard had ever said that Satan was a woman, and that cackling was high-pitched and cloying and he felt he'd heard it before, though not quite like this, not with the roar of the flames licking his ears.

"How does it feel?" said the voice, and he could not answer, because he found his vocal chords were already occupied, and that the screaming he'd heard through the hiss and crackle of the fire was his.

The flames danced higher.

::

When the fire in his skin finally stopped and the screaming had ceased, the first thing Seamus heard was a steady and slow drip-drip-dripping of liquid somewhere behind him, an echoing sound that stabbed his consciousness awake with each drop. Strangely, his first thought was that he must have been moved here, in this damp, dank place, after being burned, because the fire was so white-hot and strong it would have evaporated all liquid.

Then, after the dripping, he began to feel, which he regretted. If before, his organs and skin and bones were being ripped away from his body, now they were being returned to him, forced inside with sharp flares of pain and ghosts of flames. He missed the numbness he felt back in that dark moment between fire and now.

Next, there was the taste of blood. Blood? It was on his tongue, no, it was from his tongue, and it tasted metallic and unpleasant and thick.

And then, something cool and hard against his body – it felt good. Stone, he decided. Beneath his head and his arms. He was lying on the floor, he decided. Not a floor he was familiar with, granted, but a floor. And if he was lying on a floor then – yes, he opened his eyes (they were crusted with something, burnt flesh or salt from his tears, and he had to pry them open slowly), and there was a low ceiling. Stone, too. Grey. Solid-looking.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

He heard his own breath, which was stilted and harsh, and somewhere else, somewhere above him, another set of lungs breathed in and out, though it was a much smoother sound. Almost like a sigh with each intake of air.

"Water," he said to the person (assuming it was a person), and was surprised to find he did not cough up smoke. His voice was cracked and hoarse, barely audible. "Water," he tried again, though it wasn't much better.

Seamus thought, then, that dead people don't get thirsty, and concluded that he was alive, though he couldn't at all understand how.

The person at his feet began to laugh, and it was a familiar, hateful sound.

Alecto Carrow, his brain remembered.

And he was – in the dungeons? After having been – burned alive? He painstakingly raised his arm to look at it, and the skin was intact, with not one scorch mark or trace of crisp flesh. No, it couldn't be. He'd felt the fire. He'd been the fire.

"How did you like that?" her voice boomed, too loud for the small space. "That was just fifteen seconds, you know, and look at you." He felt something touch his leg – her boot – and it reverberated through his skull. "Look at how I broke you."

She was lying, of course, or else he was imagining it all. Because there had been flames, and it hadn't been for just fifteen seconds. There was no way – it had felt like ten years, not fifteen seconds.

"Should we Obliviate him?" another voice said – Amycus. It belonged to Amycus Carrow.

Seamus wanted to forget. He wanted to leave, and drink some water. He wanted to sleep and never wake up.

"No," Alecto said, and her greasy face appeared in Seamus' line of vision. She was peering down at him, a malicious sneer painting her mouth. "I want him to remember how it felt."

Amycus laughed.

"Water," Seamus croaked again, desperate to moisten his lips and clear his dusty, ash-filled lungs.

Amycus laughed harder.

"Here," the woman said. She threw something down at him, and it fell with a soft noise like a pencil hitting a floor. The thing – his wand? – settled a foot away from his outstretched hand. "Get your own water, you useless Gryffindor. I'm going to bed. And don't even think about skipping class tomorrow, Finnigan."

With one final cackle, they left the dungeon, left him there on the cold stone floor, with one leg bent at an impossible angle, blood dripping down the side of his mouth, unable to muster the energy to move.

::

Once again, time began to slip away from Seamus as he lay in the catacomb-like room. There was no one to keep him company but himself and the painful, jerking twitches his muscles gave every once in a while, just when he thought they'd finally subsided. His leg, the one bent out a shape, had long since gone numb, which was almost a blessing, if he wasn't so worried he'd broken it and damaged the nerves in the process.

He desperately wished for Lavender.

He didn't know how long he'd been there, listening to the constant dripping down the mouldy dungeon walls, still hurting, when a new noise broke through the water's rhythm. A loud crack! echoed throughout the room, like the sound of an Apparition, which was stupidly impossible, Merlin only knew how often Hermione had told them—

"Mr. Finnigan, sir?"

"Seamus!"

Of course, Hermione had neglected to mention that House Elves could Apparate anywhere, apparently, for there was certainly Dobby's voice, and that was most certainly Neville, who came into view as he rushed forward to kneel beside his friend.

"What?" Seamus gasped, though the sound was mostly air.

"Can you move at all?" asked Neville gently, placing his hand on Seamus' arm. A sharp sting shot through his body as it made contact.

The elf's face appeared above Seamus' too, his eyes wide, a multi-coloured hat bobbing on his head. His eyes were big and worried.

"Haven't tried much," Seamus breathed. Neville nodded and hooked his hands under Seamus' armpits.

"On three," he said. "One, two, three—"

He hoisted up the man – who immediately fell forward on his knees as blood rushed to his numbed leg. Seamus cried out in pain at the instant feeling of pins and needles stronger than any he'd felt before.

"Christ, okay, is anything broken?" Neville said. He'd jerked forward with Seamus, and was now holding his shoulders tightly. Dobby hovered nervously in front of Seamus, wringing his hands over and over.

"No, just – just hurts." He breathed in time with the dripping of water. In. Out. Fuck, it hurt. Everything hurt. His muscles ached like he'd been hit by the Knight Bus and he wanted to rip his leg off from the feeling in it. "Again," he said, his voice stronger this time.

"Okay, Dobby, can you Apparate us straight to the dorm? One, two, three—" This time Neville pulled up then immediately but his arm around Seamus' waist so the man could fully lean into him. Seamus would have been surprised at Neville's strength if he wasn't so busy trying to hold himself up.

"Fuck," he said, throwing his arm up on Neville's shoulders, "if you wanted to get this close to me you should have just said something." He winced when his bad leg touched the floor.

"Don't make me regret saving you," Neville said, smiling tightly. "Dobby?"

"Yes, sir!" Dobby reached out a hand and the room spun.

::

The light was blinding when they arrived with a crack directly in the middle of the dorm room. The world was tilting dangerously and Seamus' body hurt so much, he could do nothing else but fall forward from Neville's hold and retch onto the floor, his bile pink from the Sugar Quill he'd had earlier.

"Seamus!"

He looked up to see Lavender, Ginny and Hannah staring in shock as he heaved again and again, though there was nothing in his stomach to regurgitate. Aside from the Quill, he'd last eaten hours ago – though now it felt like days – in the infirmary with Madam Pomfrey.

"Thought you two were training," he said weakly, wiping away his mouth with a trembling hand. When he looked down again, the mess was gone.

"They finished training hours ago, Shay," Ginny said, her voice quiet in barely-disguised horror. "Thank you, Dobby, so much, but I think you should go now. You can't get caught missing." She turned to the elf, who immediately straightened into a comical salute.

"Yes, Mrs. Weasley, ma'am. Anything for Harry Potter's friends!" he squeaked, and disappeared with a final loud crack!

They helped Seamus settle into his bed quickly, and he was grateful for it. The tremors rippling in his body finally subsided, and his leg had almost regained all feeling. The pain was beginning to become a memory and he thought, for a second, that he'd almost imagined it, like he'd done with the fire again.

"Water?" he said once Neville had helped him take his shoes and trousers off. He was still agonizingly parched when Hannah returned with a glass of cold water, that she had to fill it up again three times before he was satisfied. It was the most delicious thing he'd every tasted.

Eventually, his head cleared and his breathing steadied. It had been hours ago – hours – and still his heart beat rapidly, though it was slowly calming itself. His friends stood quietly around the bed, though Lavender was sat next to him to run her fingers through his hair.

"It was the Cruciatus," he said finally, with conviction. He knew now.

Lavender's hand stilled as he spoke and Ginny breathed in sharply, but Neville's jaw hardened and he was at Seamus' bedside in an instant.

"Seamus? What year is it? Do you know who I am?" His eyes were wild and frantic as he touched Seamus' leg. Seamus huffed and rolled his eyes – they all knew the symptoms of overexposure to the Cruciatus curse, but he probably would have noticed by now if he'd had any brain damage.

"Neville Algernon Longbottom, I've already flirted with you once tonight. I'm fine, they said it was only for fifteen seconds," Seamus said, though Neville did not look assuaged. "And it's 1997," he added.

"Well," Neville said, leaning back and sighing, "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised."

"No, I flirt with you every chance I get," said Seamus dryly. Lavender's hand resumed its petting, and he thought maybe if he hadn't been in his condition he would have merited himself a smack on the head. Ginny sighed in exasperation.

"Fifteen seconds? But you were down there for hours. It's nearly two. We were so worried when you didn't come back, we thought maybe they'd tied you up like Smith—"

"Fifteen seconds, and then they left me down there. How did you find me, anyway?" He eyed Neville curiously, who smiled for the first time.

"Funnily enough, a little girl in a painting told me. Said she was a friend of yours."

That startled a bark of laughter out of Seamus, and it rasped against his throat almost pleasantly.

"A friend? I've spoken to her once. And I hope you didn't call her—"

"A little girl? Yeah. Well, I won't do it again, that's for sure," Neville said, which cause another chuckle to bubble out of Seamus' mouth. "I saw her in a portrait downstairs and she yelled my name, told me where to find you. First thing I thought of was to call for Dobby. "

"Mo's been stalking me, apparently."

"I think she used the term 'supervising'. Oh, and Dobby gave me your wand, here." Neville pulled the oak wand out and placed in on the bedside table gently.

Ginny yawned from where she was leaning against a poster. "I think you should get some rest, Foxtail. All of us."

She, however, made no move to leave the room, and only flicked her wand to turn off the lights and dim the fire blazing in the stove, to then tuck herself into Harry's old bed. Hannah followed Neville, her hand grasped in his, and Lavender pulled Seamus' blanket onto her body.

"Is this all right?" she said, turning her body to his as he sunk into the mattress. It was like she knew before he did what he needed – to not be alone tonight, to not be left with only the memories of fire and pain and cruel laughter.

He wondered if Dean was alone, wherever he was.

"Yeah. It's all right."

His head touched the pillow, so soft and comforting after having laid on the damp dungeon floor all night, and he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.